Mainstream Media Where Are You?
A group of teachers in Chicago recently started an initiative to inform college and high school students about critical global issues. The initiative deals with young people who have a wide range of academic skills, who are generally hard-working and eager to find a suitable career, and whose savvy about modern culture makes up for their lack of life experience. But they know almost nothing about their country’s relationship with the world. They know there’s a war going on, they’ve heard about genocide in Africa, they suspect that Iran is a threat to the United States. But ask them to provide some details and they return a blank stare.
It is understandable that today’s youth, with so many entertainment options and electronic distractions, and with the pursuit of good times high on their list of priorities, can’t be sufficiently aware of world issues. But they do read newspaper headlines and occasionally watch the news. They simply don’t get enough information from these sources. If they hear at all about controversial issues, the information is oversimplified, incomplete, and often one-sided.
They need to know that the U.S. is responsible for almost half of the world’s total military expenditures, that nearly half of the arms sales to developing countries (in 2005) came from the United States, and that 20 of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms sales in the developing world were declared undemocratic or human rights abusers by the U.S. State Department’s own Human Rights Report.
They need to know that the U.S. attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments from the end of WW2 to the turn of the century, many of them populist and democratic movements that were battling oppressive regimes.
They need to know that the U.S. went to war with Iraq in 2003 because of erroneous claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to Al Qaeda.
They need to know that studies by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the State Dept., and all four branches of the armed forces, revealed that the occupation of Iraq has contributed to an increase in the overall terrorist threat. And that studies by the University of Chicago, the Hoover Digest, the Cato Institute, Iraq Body Count, and the 2005 Human Security Report support these findings.
They need to know that the U.S. opposed United Nations votes on the right to food, the rights of women, the rights of children, and the right to freedom of people forcibly deprived of that right. That the U.S. opposed the banning of landmines. That the UN has accused the U.S. of repeatedly violating the World Convention against Torture, and that the UN voted the U.S. off the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2001. And that at the end of 2006, 80% of the UN’s unpaid dues were owed by the United States.
They need to know that only eight corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Viacom (formerly CBS), General Electric, Yahoo, Google, and MSN — now control most of the U.S. media, and that some of them have close connections to companies making weaponry for the U.S. military.
They need to know that while 3,000 Americans died in the horrible terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, every DAY of the year 30,000 children die of hunger and preventable diseases around the world. That the United Nations Human Development Report 2005 concluded that “The gap between the average citizen in the richest and in the poorest countries is wide and getting wider.” That the World Bank’s World Development Report 2006 stated that inequality in the U.S. is the worst in the developed world. That corporate income has risen much faster than workers’ wages, while the corporate tax rate has dropped dramatically over the past 50 years.
They need to know that U.S. foreign aid, based on percentage of income, is one of the lowest in the developed world. That most of our aid goes to relatively wealthy Israel and another ally, Egypt. That 70% of U.S. aid is ‘tied,’ which means that the recipient must use it to purchase U.S. goods and services. That even our impressive level of private aid is mostly confined to donations within the U.S., and in the form of remittances (money sent back to the home countries of people working in the United States).
They need to know that “free trade” is often skewed in favor of wealthy countries. That we give more economic aid to our own multinational companies than foreign aid to poor countries. That U.S. tariffs on countries like Viet Nam and Bangladesh are 10 times higher than on European Union countries. That according to Christian Aid, trade liberalization in the past 20 years has cost sub-Saharan Africa more than $272 billion, a staggering sum that could have erased all its debts while paying for vaccination and school for every child. That the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the New Economics Foundation, and the United Nations Report on the World Social Situation 2005 all reported that free trade has not helped the world’s poor.
Is it unpatriotic to criticize the behavior of one’s own country? It depends on the meaning of patriotism. Socrates angered people by challenging them in public and exposing their ignorance. But he felt he was acting as a patriot by encouraging thoughtfulness over blind acceptance and celebration of government policies. In words attributed to him, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Like Socrates, Henry David Thoreau believed that citizens should tolerate nothing less from their government than the highest standards of behavior. He said, “Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.” Martin Luther King talked about moving “beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience.”
But how do we know what’s true and what isn’t? Opinions derived from any one source may be inaccurate, or biased, or simply wrong. Our students in the Global Initiative are taught to research the issues, to seek multiple sources if there is any question about the truth. It can be hard work. Their job would be a lot easier if the newspapers and TV news shows would take on the big issues and make a realistic effort to provide balanced coverage.
Paul Buchheit is a professor with the Chicago City Colleges, co-founder of Global Initiative Chicago, and the founder of fightingpoverty.org. He has contributed to commondreams, counterpunch, and countercurrents.
Email: pbuchheit@ccc.edu
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1967
Nice set of references.
The mainstream media are securely inside the pockets where they have been placed and will stay there because that’s where it pays the best to be.
Risk vs. reward. They get rewarded for avoiding risky issues.
CNN, Fox, ABC, and others. You’re an embarrassment to any real journalist.
Pathetic shills to very well paying lords and masters every last one of you.
I’d suggest you should be ashamed, but you’ve all clearly exhibited you have no shame. Engorged pigs. Your behavior is disgusting.
Please keep up the steady stream of inane meaningless fluff.
Just stop insulting us all by implying that it’s news.
Whores.
That’s telling it like it is. Talk about a US history lesson in a nutshell. Thank you so much Paul Buchheit, for painting the big picture. I’m sending this around, especially to the young people on my email list for an overview of US behavior for the past 60 years. I hope it’s a wake-up for people.
Great job. Kathy
Paul,
UN statistics indicate that the number of people living in poverty in 1970 was 1.4 billion, today the number of people living in poverty is 1.2 billion with a much larger population.
Gapminder.org has this nice presentation of UN statistics that show how the world is developing with time.
http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/presentations/human-development-trends-2005.html
While much more can be done, it is not correct to imply the efforts to reduce world poverty have been fruitless to this point. Much of what the world community has been doing to reduce poverty has been successful. The UN statistics indicate that poverty world wide is declining.
Basically the world today is a better place than it was 40 years ago and we should persist in our efforts to further improve it for everyone.
Most young people find it difficult to tear themselves away from their televisions long enough to eat, let alone make informed decisions about world affairs.
I would add to the list of references the report from Oxfam and Amnesty International concerning the number of weapons sold by the U.S. and other countries throughout the world, and the damage done by this kind of trafficking. This can be found here: http://www.controlarms.org/
The price of cheap patriotism is coined in the realm of lies and denials. Or worse, in the land of apathy and slouth.
But isn’t that the grand plan? Keep them distracted over there - while over here, “they” are pouring ice cold water on the American dream?
Stay asleep ‘merican’s - one day you’ll wake up with the biggest hangover imaginable. You’ll look all squinty eyed at the fascist landscape, a life style you can no longer sustain, a job you hate, a family that demands THINGS, and YOU - incapable of connecting two dots.
DavidJames - Nice statistics buddy.
Good thing those dead from the conditions of impoverishment don’t count as ‘living in poverty’ isn’t it?
I guess the misery doesn’t matter if the math looks good.
Nice.
Going to bookmark this and use it when anybody mistakenly tries to tell me we what type of world we live in.
We know where the “Mainstream” (more properly called “corporate”) media are and why they’re there. What is not clear is why anybody continues paying any attention to them. We must use the power of our attention (”eyeballs” in net parlance) to “vote with our feet” (old school parlance), leave the corporate media behind and move on to more informative and relevant sources of news like Commondreams.org, Truthout, indy media, etc. –> the “net roots” media.
Friends don’t let friends obsess on corporate propaganda “news”.
When we become our own best news source(s), “media” ceases to exist to the extent that the word means “to mediate”, to be “between” newssource and public, and we enter the age of “mass immedia”.
They also need to know:
That if they are uninterested in the affairs of their country and the world, they are just dummies.
That if they do not seek information from alternative sources and media, they will remain dummies.
That if they are unaware of what is actually happening in their own country and the world, they are dummies.
That if they isolate themselves from human suffering elsewhere, they are dummies.
That if they have a blind allegiance to their country no matter what, they are dummies.
That if they…they are dummies.
Agree CK - like Rather said when they brought Katie Couric in to do his old job. “They have dumbed it down and tarted it up.”
The MSM “news” is nothing more then drive by coverage for a drive through culture. Dot connectors like us have long ago skipped past this travesty called “news” to seek our information on progressive radio and the Internet. A 30 second stop at one of the right wing sewer pipe radio stations, gives one a glimpse of what has poisoned our democracy.
Great article , Paul. Thanks for the incredible list of references.
With such an awesome responsibility as often the sole harbinger of news good and bad, we should expect much from our mainstream media. Instead, we get the titillation of the trivial. We get breathless blondes reporting on missing blondes. We get entirely uncritical fascination with unreal celebrities. We get insipid “conversations” between shouting talking heads. And worst of all, we get utterly spineless reporting with no edge, no slash and bite, no grabbing on and not letting go.
Truthfulness and accuracy have little pull at all anymore; only the most fantastical, the most horrible, and the most simplified are served up for public consumption. And we eat it, and eat it greedily, until we’ve become obese in mind and scared in spirit.
There’s so much newsworthy going on in this vast and wonderful world of ours every day. Good news and bad pours forth day after day, much of it trite and dull and boring, but so much more so necessary and fascinating that we require computers and newspapers, radios and televisions to grab at it all for bits and pieces for which to keep in hopes of one day understanding some part of how the larger world works.
So when the mainstream media, the primary source of news for many Americans, is more interested in pursuing audience share and turning a profit, it fails in its basic journalistic responsibilities to serve as witness to injustice and as watchdog over the powerful, and we’re all the poorer for it.
When television “journalists” want always to pitch a fight between polarized views rather than convening public discussions to find serious answers, we’re all the poorer for it.
When the “news” substitutes emotion for fact, feel-good human interest stories for hard-nosed reporting, and sound bites for political discourse, we’re all the poorer for it.
Was it Naisbitt who said “the world is drowning in detail but starved for knowledge”? Wise man. He must have pointed his finger at the MSM when he said it.
I hope that I’m not preaching to the choir when I say let’s not forget about Common Dreams’ Summer Appeal.
The bigger issue of course is “you ain’t going to learn what you don’t want to know”.
Is the history curriculum that is taught in our schools still controlled by the right wing as it was back in the 50’s and 60’s (or perhaps always?)? I suspect so.
Please note: due to something al Qaeda related, all of the above information has recently been classified by Vice Loonitary Non-Executive Cheney. Remembering any of it can result in the removal of your citizenship.
frank1569: thank you so much for today’s hearty laugh.
Peace,
Ken Hausle
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
I guess this isn’t the website I was looking for. There is nothing here but political stuff,
I want the latest Paris Hilton news. Seriouly, if the mainstream media had been reporting all
along what websites like this have been doing, this administration would not have gotten away
with the crimes they have committed. It isn’t just the press, for the most part, the democrats
are just as guilty for what the republicans have done.
Mainstream Media Where Are You?
Out for a 4-martini lunch with the newspaper’s advertisers, of course.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the covert link between companies that supply weapons and WHY the news is purposefully about nothing, like that Seinfeld episode where George is trying to sell a sit-com based on lives where nothing of import occurs. The key statistics cited in the above article are about the profits made from war, and the delinquent trafficking in arms that support the inevitability of violence among already tense, if not outright warring tribes. There should be a law that either penalizes profits from war, or taxes the s–t out of them, to make such enterprise no longer profitable. This is the key, this is why media is smoke and mirrors and the one thing conspicuous by its absence is the TRUTH about war, and the living horror of its murdered statistics.
Great article, wrong conclusion.
“Their job would be a lot easier if the newspapers and TV news shows would take on the big issues and make a realistic effort to provide balanced coverage.”
True, but it’s not going to happen. Mainstream media is co-opted by corporations. You noted that above. The best things kids can do is turn off the TV. If that’s not possible, Tivo your TV, and most definitely do not watch mainstream news. Gte your news from Democracy Now! and others.
stinger_28
Numbers can tell you a lot about reality.! I claim that the numbers show that the world is a vastly better place than it was 30 years ago. That doing good, does good and that we should do more of it.
UN statistics show that many of the largest countries in the world have reduced Child Mortality from 100 to 200 deaths per 1000 children born to 30 to 100 deaths per 1000 children born.
Surely you will admit this is an improvement. Check the gapminder animated statistics plot out here.
Of course there is a very obvious explaination:
1) the majority of Americans don’t have a problem with America excersiing and projecting its power if it benefits America.
2) the people who run mainstream media know their audience, and give them what they want. Maybe the majority of American’s want to hear about Paris Hilton, the latest serial killer, etc..etc… rather than complex political discussions. If the majority of American’s
wanted serious news, then the MacNeil Lehr report? (I think its called) (I don’t have TV) or that other PBS nightly newscast would be the most
popular evening newscast.
Maybe the American people are speaking loud and clear, and most are more interested in baseball news, gossip, etc…
And maybe the majority of Americans do look down upon anyone who is overly critical of their countries foreign policy during times of “war”.
Maybe a reality check is in order. The mainstream media knows exactly where they are, the author of this article doesn’t.
Oh you had to love it!
Today LIVE on CNN Michael Moore was interviewd by Wolf Blitzer. Unfortunately for both Wolf and his network, CNN it was, as I said, LIVE and Michael Moore took full advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity to BLAST Mainstream Media in their continual misinformation and weak approach to real news for Americans. Moore took off running, blasting Wolf and CNN for their inept reporting on the lead up to the Iraq War and their twisted and corporate leaning news reporting, especially on our miserable healthcare in this country. Moore never let up, with Blitzer standing there like a deer in headlights. It was some of the greatest CNN news I’ve seen in years! Way to go Michael.
Until regulatons force the mainstream media to be accountable they won’t be. We used to have the “fairness doctrine” and the “must carry rules” that protected out democratic principles. But, through privatization the people no longer own the air-waves or the cable/satelite systems that deliver us our news, large corporations do without restriction or regulation on telling us the truth. This is their idea of an open marketplace. It sucks.
DJ, could you be a worse shill for your little fact fabrication business? I guess we know where some of the networks and papers are getting their statisitics from.
You may have accidentally tripped over a real fact, but then, like a running back that’s been tackled too hard too many times, you ran for the wrong end of the field.
The ‘fact’ that the child mortality rate has lowered is likely correct and this is partly due to UN administered programs distributing birth control and related education in the third
world. The poorest parts of the developing world are starting to prevent childbirth, which boosts your statistics for a lowered infant mortality rate.
This isn’t a global societal improvement so much as a politically acceptable culling of the weakest, most vulnerable among us.
Basic animal predation. More for us, none for them, because we can. Maintained by an engineered abscense of real help, or the rule of law.
This is not a sign of global improvement, since none of those kids should be starving or going without clean water and necessary medicine in the first place.
It is the corrupt governments and the first world corporations that pay them off to ensure all the arable land makes ‘cash crops’ like cheap canola for our cooking oil, cheap
cotton for our t-shirts and narcotics for our pharmaceutical industry instead of growing food that deserve the lion’s share of the blame.
Finally, to get back to the topic at hand…
WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA?!!!
They would only need to know all that stuff if anybody
have a hooey about them. Evidently their parents don’t -
or at least half of them don’t. Half of them voted for
Bush - twice. Where in the hell are American’s adults?
They have their heads in fantasyland - fierce fighters
and survivors of the big TV adventure.
Its sad, but hopeless.
Unfortunately for those less fortunate, the media will always arrive late to their plight, if at all. The stories of poverty and death by societal neglect not only does not draw a crowd, but gets in the way of regularly-scheduled crap.
Arundhati Roy said it well when she wrote of our “crisis-driven media, which picks a crisis to the bone, then drops it and moves on.” She lamented the media’s penchant for “crisis as spectacle, as theater”, and made the remarkably astute observation that for victims of crisis, once the media moves on “the darkness becomes deeper than it was before the light shone on them.”
“Do you think it is a democratic practice that if you want to be elected senator in this country, you need at least $20 million?” Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuelan Embassador to the U.S.
The fact is mainstream media is carrying out it’s primary function. That is, to sell products and to keep the general population diverted a from thinking about real issues. Point is that the only real democratic choice we have as consumers, which is our primary function in capitalist society, is the right to chose among commodities.
So for those of you say the mainstream media as failed are looking at from the wrong prospective.
They are doing just what they are suppose to do. Selling and dummying down.
Some people “buy it”, some are miserable “buying it”, and some just don’t “buy it”.
I would say that the majority of people fall somewhere in the first two categories.
Will it every change? I am somewhat doubtful, but have hope.
After all we here at CommonDreams and many other alternative “news” sites see it . So, maybe someday they all will..
Or, maybe we are just spinning our wheels, and the corporate machine already as us factored in.
Monopoly Media
“Only eight corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Viacom (formerly CBS), General Electric, Yahoo, Google, and MSN — now control most of the U.S. media, and that some of them have close connections to companies making weaponry for the U.S. military.”
If you follow those “connections” very far in any directions, you find many more “connections,” which seem like a long chain of Siamese Twins. They may not all share the same name, but they are all related.
When control of all information is in the hands of small group of “investors” with an ax to grind, you will invariably find tightly controlled snippets of “news” tailored to fit the unreality, the reality. Americans are conditioned from childhood by psychologists, advertisers and public relation corporations to “buy the message,” whatever it may be.
Rather than allowing the continued consolidation of News Corporations, Americans had best begin to question the Omniscient “investor’s” motives as they determine “all the news that’s fit to hear.”
.
Telling observation: For months I have been googling “Hillary Clinton & “Al Gore”. Clinton gets a unified rallying cheer from the MSM, Gore gets attacked regularly. Who would you say poses the greater threat to the status quo?
It is tragic, the sad gullibility, the susceptibility to the go-team mentality that spans from national patriotism to electorial politics. Never could stand a pep rally–and that is where those emotional allegiances are nurtured. Witness pathetic Democratic party partisan cheerleading at sites like “Democratic Underground” where there are vicious attacks on the “sheeple” who follow Bush, but blindness when it comes to their own knee-jerk team spirit. It never seems to occur to some that progressives are not the only interests competing to “take back the party”. The Right has a powerful foothold–why wouldn’t they in their quest for total power–and their main emphasis is to sure up the Right and marginalize and destroy any political threat to that corporate power structure. Thus, our finest Americans–Ralph Nader, and now Cindy Sheehan are beaten savagely–ruthlessly despised because they challenge Democrats who have proven themselves complicit for years now. And they are on our side. they are our heroes. It never changes, this sorry state of human affairs–they crucify Jesus every day. Rallying around that big “D” they support the Right and work against their own best interests.
And then there are the media whores like Tucker Carlson whose livlihood is basically a mouthpiece for the corporation, whose main mission seems to be framing, in the most casual manner, the majority view as that of fringe weirdos and wackos, as if it was common knowlege. Last night he just dismissed John Conyers as some loon.
With a few exceptions–Sy Herst comes to mind, there is no jornalistic integrity, no professionalism anymore. It has become an occupation more dispicable than lawyers–just generic bimbos and frat boys echoing talking points–who follow orders knowing they are interchangeable.
If VERN is right, and corporations present a fabricated majority opinion, (i.e. lie about the truth), and then the American public follows, because they believe the lie is the truth, means that the majority of Americans are non-thinking lemmings, who are disconnected from reality.
Why are progressives immune to this manipulation, and everyone else is?
This myth that people are sheep is wrong.
Every human being on this planet is free, in their minds at least. Free to think and believe and deciede.
It is quite possible that TV news, newspapers, and all sorts of other modes of communication are manipulated and controled. So what.
Does that make people lemmings?
IF there is a problem, its much deeper than what is being discussed here.
People are manipulated–it is called “manufactured consensus”. Propaganda designed to appeal to emotions like fear and allegiance to indoctrinated beliefs and myths about freedom and liberty. Like religion. Or, suggestions of what conventional knowledge consists of, or the creation of bandwagon-style views (everybody thinks that so it must be so). Or smears to the truth or dumbing-down academics and critical thinking skills. Lack of exposure to the truth–as itemized in the article. The list goes on–of course we aren’t free, that is the point. It is an illusion when we aren’t provided with the whole picture in order to have any perspective.
Tech 2, you are right on several points; progressives are not immune to media manipulation, people are not factually sheep, and most importantly there is a much deeper problem.
The real problem that is affecting our entire nation, and therefore the world over, is 95% of all the media we are exposed to is for profit. The problem with it being for profit is that since profits are the highest priority then bringing real news to the people can’t be. Any media be it TV, newspaper, magazines, radio or billboards with ads, commercials or corporate sponsors (or .COM web sites) fall into this category. The good news is that this makes them relatively easy to identify for the most part. NPR with its sponsors of SONY, Shell, etc is not as obvious as well as some .org web sites that when you dig down a few pages are ‘backed’ by numerous large corporations.
Many progressives have come to realize, if only subconsciously, that all for profit media is really just ‘Infotainment’ and must be take for what it is. There is nothing wrong with for profit media in itself. The problem comes from the fact that since it appears all around us in many different forms all over the country people feel like it must really be news. This is what leads to the term ’sheeple’. So many of us actually end up living in a world that is defined by corporate-profits first ‘news’ that we can be manipulated in mass just like sheep. Even as they watch or listen to ‘news’ programs most people don’t make the connection that the industries represented by the commercials that fill 40-50% of what they are taking in is actually bringing them therefore defining their ‘news’. Nowadays that can happen while just standing line at the bank or eating at McD’s which is so much like George Orwell’s book 1984 it is truly scary. Another analogy that can be made is the movie The Matrix where everything that people see, hear and feel is being manipulated and since it is all around them with no holes they believe it to be reality. A good book/movie to get to see how we come to this point is Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
The really good news is that now with satellite TV and the Internet (as long as Net Neutrality is maintained) there are sources of news by non-profit company’s whose first priority is to bring people the facts or what can be considered real news. There are 24 hr TV channels such as LinkTV and FreeSpeechTV, hour long news programs such as Democracynow.org, editorial web sites such as CommonDreams.org (which of course got us having this discussion in the first place) or Thinkprogress.org. There are many more but just like with these but people have to actively seek them out. Being non-profit they will never be showing in a McDonald’s, bank or inside a metro train and therefore word of mouth is the only way to accelerate the people’s access across the nation of media by the people and for the people. Then we can stop calling them sheeple and they can be real people using there free minds as you stated but while having real facts to make educated decisions and actions.
Good discussion. Thank you to Strange Animals for quoting Arundhati Roy, arguably one of the most insightful voices of this generation.
Good points: Rick and Rabblerowzer.
Tech2: I agree with Vern. The shaping devices that begin PROGRAMMING most children from infancy are massive! What is the most painful thing to an individual? Loss of contact, rejection from the tribe. To FIT in most most adapt to the cultural cues around them. In today’s atmosphere of US religiosity, religion is acting as a POWERFUL shaping mechanism. When an impressionable child is taken into a church to hear “hell and damnation” and all kinds of castigations against sin, their behavior is influenced on many levels.
24/7 media does the work of shaping tastes. Pundits tell people what is “normal.” Some peopl are natural rebels, there is a percentage that are too keen to TRUTH to play into these mechanisms, but they are scarcely the majority. This is why the TRUE leader lifts mankind and realizes the “teachable” moment. MANY can be influenced, indeed their whole lives have been shaped by the voices around them that represent the norms du jour.
The study of history, the calamitous ruination of peoples, always some target scapegoat group unmercifully sacrificed, is enough to tell us that laws ARE meant to be broken, particularly when they do not SERVE the HIGHER truths. This is where the sages come into the game. Unfortunately in the present era of verisimilitude, pretense and the celebration of the artificial, an atmosphere where MAMMON rules and shapes tastes accordingly, the requisite “judge the tree by its fruit” is made quite difficult. In spite of this, I believe that the element that makes our souls immortal is a tiny fragment of the GOD essence, and it’s implanted in each of us. It works the way the north star led ships and their navigators to promised new destinations. So long as we follow this spark of LIGHT within, it is exceedingly difficult to do anything that would harm another. With that being said, as human beings, we wrestle with our angst, the pain of living in times where matters have departed so far from the compass of sanity/justice, that our tempers may shorten. Everyone I know is being tested, not only in terms of what our nation is propagating (and the karmic dividends such activity is sure to cost), but also in terms of the issues they face. Perhaps it is a phase of tribulation, but I still would argue, this is equivalent to the painful laboring process the Mother experiences in the act of giving birth. From the ashes of this phase transition will come a new epoch for mankind… even if the numbers are vastly reduced.
CSS: Good explanation!
Most adults, as they age, harbour an irrational fear of turning into, or sounding like, or holding the same unfounded prejudices as their parents.
Maybe it’s about time parents educated their children that, in these dangerous times, it’s not such an irrational fear after all.
Don’t become us!
Paul,
First of all, I would like to commend you for your work with Global Initiative Chicago (GIC); I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you the past year. Your enthusiasm and passion for increasing the global knowledge of our students, the general public, and everyone in between is admirable and contagious.
Secondly, I think you have written an objective piece, complete with seventy-six sources. All too often our students look to uncredited, undocumented and/or unreliable outlets for information. Subjectivity in the corporate media is unwarranted and not needed. Being forcefully spoonfed the news for decades, news aligned with agendas that are anything but objective, has repressed an individual’s ability to think critically.
Thanks for helping to remind others that they have an intellect and reasoning skills. You’re truly leading by example, not only in words, but deeds, fighting for what needs to be given and known.
I will certainly use your piece to promote GIC events in my classroom.
KB
stinger_28,
From all that I read, I also have been convinced that the main reason for the reduction in poverty is the reduction in the birthrate in the impoverished areas of the planet. However, though the UN programs at birth control are commendable, we should recognize that the greatest reduction in birthrate, and the greatest reduction in poverty, occurred in China because of the one-child policy (actually, one in the city, two in the countryside). China has industrialized with a change in economic policy, but their industrialization has progressed at a rate and with a magnitude far exceeding that of any other place on earth. But far be it from corporate/right-wing apologists to ever admit that China’s one-child policy has benefited China or the world (no, it must have been worldwide corporate predatory capitalism, that’s the ticket!).
CSS; thanks for spreading the word, especially FREE SPEECH TV and LINK TV, in my opinion, the best stations on the air. I’ve been encouraging people to get the Dish Network satelite as it has FSTV. Murdock owns Direct TV, so I tell people not to patronize that company.
Too all of you commenting on Professor Bucheit’s informative article, my thanks and appreciation that there are more and more of us exposing the prostituted corporate media, and the lack in real journalism.
You’ve all said it much better!
Eyes and ears wide open! Communication in all its different forms today is leap years from where it was in the fifties and sixties. Corporate dominance then meant everything but beat poets or revolutionary rags. The powers that be struggle to tweak the truth in the same old way while a wave of alternative realities is taking another course.
In this christian country that it pretends to be, Paul Buchheit’s reflections make the ten commandments look like cheap deodorant. Such stench is impossible to conceal.
My point in using the Gapminder.org animations of UN statistics, to show that the world has become a better place over the last 40 years, is that corporate media is becoming irrelevant. It is what Common Dreams is all about.
Paul’s piece is a bit depressing. Why worry excessively about main stream media. We have Common Dreams. We can act as individuals and what we do as individuals has an effect. Our participation in the UN has been for the better. Our tax-deductible contributions have an impact. Contribute to Common Dreams, http://www.smallplanetfund.org or www.eff.org, etc., they all make a difference.
If there ever were a people on earth that had the means to make a difference it is the citizens of the developed countries today.
To just follow up, it has been claimed that low child mortality is just the result of culling in the poor countries. UN statistics indicate that this is not so. It is the result of family planning and it is world wide.
The gapminder chart below compares child mortality to number of children born per women over time for all the countries in the world.
Families thoughtout the world, not just China have significantly reduced the number of children born per woman. Even the US went from 4 children to 2 children per woman. Currently, many African countries are the exception in both number of children born per woman and child mortality.
The general gapminder link is:
http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
To look at how child mortality and children per woman are related, set the y axis to children per woman and the x axis to child mortality and play the animation.
A video presentation of how to use this statistical tool can be found at www.ted.com website.
This is the Link to Hans Rosling’ presentation of “the best statistics you have seen”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
Congratulations to Global Initiative Chicago and the leaders and teachers involved for an outstanding attempt to help the next generation learn about what is really going on. My question is why these dedicated people, and other dedicated teachers throughout the country, should have to organize a group OUTSIDE of school in order to provide thoughtful discussion and real dialogue with high school students (and college students as well). Somehow we are all inured to a public education system that does NOTHING to create thoughtful consideration, debate, dialogue, and real engagement with issues–and everything to foster a bloodthirsty competition for coveted places in the most prestigious colleges, as though becoming a ‘have’ instead of a ‘have-not’ were going to solve the world’s ills.
Thus, the education system created to ’safeguard order and liberty’ has become one more tool of an impersonal, increasingly ignorant, heavily politicized, and decadent mainstream culture.
Our schools as presently organized are not adequate to the challenges of the Information Age. They are still operating on an antiquated factory model, pushing kids along on conveyor belts as though they were widgets bound for the marketplace. Retooling will not even come close to the REINVENTION that is needed if we want our country to stop underwriting atrocities and start moving toward those ideals we all espouse. With enough investment and commitment, we can change this trend in one generation, and then what will the mainstream media do?
If you want to know what’s really going on inside schools, please read my fictionalized account in a novel called Angel Park, which exposes the system’s decay and the complicity of the media in maintaining the inert status quo. Despite my .com aspirations, I would be glad to send a free copy of my book to anyone who reads this post. www.changetheschools.com
We threw out the tv and canceled all subscriptions over 4 years ago. We have decided it will be permanent.
The people on this chat are awesome. I wish we could organize though.